Thank you. Thank you to everyone around the country and around the world who poured into the streets today and sent a clear message that we will not go quietly.
Beyond the #WomensMarch: Now the real work begins
Politics
An Open Letter of Apology to President Barack Obama
Haven’t posted anything new since my piece on the January 6th insurrection. Needed a break. In the meantime, I’m pinning this entry at the top of my homepage because it is the post of which I remain the most proud, and I’d rather it be the first thing people see/hear than my (justifiably) angry rant about the insurrection. -JZ
Dear Mr. President,
Let me begin by saying the two words you deserve to hear cross the lips of every American citizen, whether they know it or not:
It’s gonna be a loooooooong four years
Way to go, Red States! You sure showed us, huh? Wow. Rarely has such an epic act of unbridled stupidity, ignorance, selfishness, fear and hatred been carried out on such a massive scale. Well played!
The post in which I take a deep breath and try to pull my shit together
Wow. Waaaaahhhhhow. The dude who wrote that previous post was pissed, huh? Daaaaaamn.
Well, look on the bright side: At least we … um … you know … uhhh … there’s always … hmmm … OK, I’ve got nothin’. We’re fucked.
You know that pivotal scene in “The Matrix” when a hairless Neo wakes up in a gel-filled pod and realizes that, up until that moment, he had absolutely no idea just how awful was the world around him, and just how misguided was he about the truth of his own existence? Yeah, that’s me, right now … minus the “hairless” part. (You’re welcome for that visual, though.)
I apologize in advance if none of the words I am about to type make a shred of sense, but I am deliriously sleep-deprived and deeply rattled by the recent discovery that I now exist in an alternate universe where an angry mob of millions just handed the nuclear codes to an abhorrent, vile, vulgar, uninformed, ill-tempered, bad-humored, intellectually challenged, racist, sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic, greedy, selfish, thin-skinned, petulant, pathetic little bully man-child because “Fuck you, you liberal-elites and all your reasonable, logical, tolerant, fact-based book-learnin’!”
Angry, post-Newtown rant (or: No, asshole face, the Second Amendment doesn’t give you the right to endanger all of us)
We took the kids to the mall this past weekend for our annual family photo with Santa and, while standing in line, I saw hanging on an adjacent ornament vendor’s rack the patently offensive item shown above. (And I’m more than just a little ashamed to say that I didn’t, in that moment, have the presence of mind to gather them all up and hand them to the vendor while suggesting that he maybe throw them away.)
“But Jon, that’s obviously for hunting enthusiasts. Lighten up.”
Lighten up? Really? You want me to lighten up? Because here’s the thing: Fuck you; I’m all out of “Lighten up.”
A new beginning
I bought this shirt about a year ago, not long after President Obama (President Obama! Sweet Jumping Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, I love saying that!) won the Iowa Caucus. At the time, I still thought he was a bit of a long shot, but, after having started off the campaign season convinced that Hillary was my candidate, I suddenly found myself swept up in the excitement of Barack Obama’s candidacy. The man moved me — and still does. And, thankfully, he also moved a majority of the voting public last November.
Patriotic duty
This morning, I taped my “Veterans for Obama” sign to my front-door window. I did so to compensate for the fact that some asshole walked all the way up to the front of my house in broad daylight yesterday and stole my Obama yard sign. Fortunately, I’m pretty sure that the lack of signage in my front yard won’t have a substantial impact on Obama’s final vote tally tomorrow.